Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954)

Emmeline Pethick was born in Clifton, near Bristol, the daughter of a devout Methodist family. Her father was a businessman and her mother had 13 children, of whom 5 died in infancy. At the age of eight, Emmeline was sent to boarding school in Devizes. In 1891, she became a social worker in London. Shocked by the poverty of the people she worked with, she became a socialist and a supporter of women's right to vote. She co-founded the Esperance Working Girls’ Club in 1895 with Mary Neal and the Maison Esperance, a dressmaking co-operative to help young women make a living. In 1901, she married Frederick William Lawrence, a wealthy lawyer and owner of the left-wing newspaper The Echo, who was later created Baron Pethwick-Lawrence. He agreed to add Emmeline's name to his own as a gesture of equality. The couple founded and edited Votes for Women, the weekly journal of the Women’s Social and Political Union (although it later split off), which often met in their home. They were arrested in 1912 and served nine months in prison for their militant suffragist activities. They went on a hunger strike and were force-fed. Emmeline published a number of suffragist pamphlets, many of them printed versions of public speeches she gave, and she wrote numerous letters-to-the editor on a wide variety of national and international political topics. Emmeline was one of the organizers of the International Peace Conference held at The Hague in 1915.
She stood as the Labour candidate for Rusholme, Manchester in 1918, but was not elected. From 1926 to 1935, she was president of the Women’s Freedom League.She supported her husband’s political career, which included election as a Member of Parliament in 1923 and a term as Leader of the Opposition in 1942. He was appointed Secretary of State for India and Burma in 1945 and elevated to the peerage, making her Baroness Pethick-Lawrence. She published her autobiography, My Part in a Changing World, in 1938.